Archive for category Meta stuff

Just FYI, I’m out of the country for a while, and won’t have a whole lot of internet access for a while. Comments may get stuck in moderation for a while, and obviously there’ll be no new posts. There are plenty of great blogs in the sidebar to the right – go and read them instead!

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The Istyosty proxy, which I use for linking the more terrible examples of journalism (for instance, Delingpole columns), has been taken down by legal threats. As a result, some links will be broken. Sorry, I’ll try to update the links when I have the time.

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A while back, The Guardian‘s Media Monkey blog published a coupleof sex scenes from an upcoming novel from Sky newsreader Kay “The entire eastern seaboard of the United States has been decimated by a terrorist attack” Burley, and they were as hilariously awful as you’d imagine – not to mention uncannily similar to a Garth Marenghi novel. Everyone had a good laugh and then moved on… until a copy turned up on my birthday, plastered with “BUY ONE GET ONE FREE” stickers and offers of free designer shoes. Naturally, I had to read it, otherwise all those trees would have died in vain.

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Not a proper blog post at all, this, just a recipe for something I’ve decided to call election chicken. It’s basically coronation chicken crossed with chicken tikka masala (supposedly the most popular dish in the country and therefore the one with democratic mandate) crossed with various bits and bobs around the kitchen. Oh, and it tastes AMAZING.

Ingredients (fills about 4 to 6 sandwiches):

about 400 g of diced chicken (you can use the precooked stuff from the supermarket, or just chop up some chicken breasts and fry them with some curry spices)

one small pot (250 ml) of creme fraiche

about the same amount of mayonnaise

3 heaped teaspoons tandoori masala

1 heaped teaspoon paprika

splash of red wine

splash of Worcestershire sauce

a decent handful of grated cheese (I used double Gloucester for a quite creamy taste, but you could use mature cheddar for a stronger kick)

2 teaspoons of tomato puree

Basically just mix it all together in a big bowl (if you’re cooking the chicken yourself, let it cool a little first), stand for a few minutes, and serve with salad in a sandwich!

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I know this isn’t exactly my normal sort of post, but to be fair, if every science journalist in the country read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine,* the number of posts on this blog could probably be halved.

Delusions of Gender is a response to every “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” article and book, looking into the actual science behind them. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the time it turns out the evidence behind the claims weak or poorly thought out; relationship and parenting advice books routinely claim the existence of titanic gulfs between the sexes based on barely significant differences, while journalists will happily claim that women empathise more or that men are more logical based solely on the fact that more men than women answered “yes” to the question “Are you logical?”.

More interestingly, Fine brings out countless findings about how the mind is affected by the outside world. For example, there’s a process called “priming“, where simply telling someone that men or women are expected to do better on a puzzle affects their ability accordingly – even if the priming is entirely subconscious. Other targets of Fine’s include improperly interpreted brain scans, studies that assume children have no understanding of society, publication bias, and some frankly bizarre “science” (one study claimed that women had evolved to be homemakers because female chimps in captivity enjoyed playing with saucepans – of course, how a chimp with no knowledge of cooking would know what a saucepan was for was never answered).

A fair bit of the book feels quite specifically targeted at a few authors – Simon Baron-Cohen, Leonard Sax and Louann Brizendine (the latter two in particular are both called out for making claims not supported by the actual studies they cite) – which can make the book a bit alienating to read at times if you’re not familiar with them. Delusions of Gender is also a little more heavy going than some popular science books, as Fine sometimes sacrifices simplicity for rigour – though her dry, often wonderfully sarcastic wit will at least get you through these parts with a smile on your face. Nevertheless, it’s well worth reading when you want to read newspapers, pop-psychology books or parenting advice with a more critical mind.

* I should probably point out that despite the title, the book doesn’t actually claim gender is a delusion. In fact, Fine quotes a number of interesting studies, particularly involving transgender people, which demonstrate that gender is an actual property of the mind – but that the actual ties between sex and gender are often weak.